He was a polarizing figure. Rex Heuermann, 59, of Massapequa Park, NY, won no neighborly awards. Those who lived near him described the man as creepy, with reports of parents telling their children to skip his house on Halloween night. His residence has been described as ramshackle, covered with overgrown plants and other vegetation. To drop a movie reference here, it seems like it was the Klopek house regarding its appearance. It was Mr. Heuermann’s childhood home. Little did people know that an elusive serial killer who allegedly murdered at least ten women over the past 15-plus years might be living next door.
It started with one body in the dunes near a highway on Long Island in December of 2010. The skeletal remains of a woman led to more bodies being found at nearby Gilgo Beach, which now seems to be New York’s version of the ‘Texas Killing Fields.’ It was a dumping ground for an unknown serial killer targeting sex workers. As the Associated Press pointed out, the search for this killer lasted over 12 years. It went through five police chiefs, 1,000 tips, and many more theories about the suspect's identity. The investigation didn’t catch a break until a new Suffolk County police commissioner, Rodney Harrison, established a new task force last year to take down the ‘Long Island Serial Killer,’ also known as the Gilgo Beach Killer.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney told the AP that the break in the case revolved around a Chevrolet Avalanche that eyewitnesses saw parked outside of the home of one of the victims, Amber Costello. During their investigation, it was discovered that Mr. Heuermann owned such a vehicle and lived in Massapequa Park. That detail led to a sordid discovery of violent pornography searches, burner phones, phony email accounts, and dating site interactions that pieced together the nocturnal activities of Mr. Heuermann and how he allegedly searched for his victims.
Police discovered that Heuermann’s mobile phone location would show up near or around the area where his burner would contact his victims. In a brazen act, he used the phone of one of his victims, Melissa Barthelemy, to taunt her family after she was declared missing. Mr. Heuermann’s phone was pinged near Barthelemy’s device during these menacing calls. It was the body of Melissa Barthelemy, who was discovered in the dunes in December 2010. The remains of the three other women found nearby, dubbed the “Gilgo Four,” were Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello.
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Now, a person of interest, police needed DNA evidence to piece it all together and make an arrest which they did, according to the AP, by tailing Mr. Heuermann, grabbing bottles and half-eaten pizza crust from his garbage to test against hairs found in the burlap sacks that contained the bodies, along with those found on the duct tape and a belt buckle (via Associated Press):
The first find was startling: a woman’s skeletal remains cast into the dunes along a remote Long Island highway.
Then came the shock.
Days after that discovery in December 2010, police discovered parts of three more women nearby on a spit of sand known as Gilgo Beach. The remains of six other people were found along several miles of the same parkway during the next few months. An 11th person, whose disappearance had spurred the initial search, was found dead by the highway in December 2011.
[…]
Harrison announced a new task force to work the case shortly after he became commissioner in January 2022. He’d been a high-ranking New York Police Department official and brought new energy and perspective to the investigation years after the Suffolk department’s former chief was arrested and went to prison in an unrelated case.
Tierney said a breakthrough came six weeks into the group’s work, when a New York State Police investigator used a database to determine that Heuermann owned an early-model Chevrolet Avalanche and lived in Massapequa Park, an area that had come into focus because of some victims’ cellphone activity.
The Avalanche was key because witnesses had told police that a man had parked one outside the home of victim Amber Costello the night before she died, and that the sex worker had arranged to meet that man again the next night, according to prosecutors’ court filing.
[…]
Using subpoenas and search warrants, investigators dug into Heuermann’s background. They learned that his cellphone had often been in the same general areas, around the same times, as prepaid anonymous cellphones that had been used to contact Barthelemy, Costello and victim Megan Waterman, the court papers said. The “burner” phones and Heuerman’s phone sometimes even traveled together.
[…]
The DNA from the pizza matched a hair found on burlap wrapped around one victim, and other hairs matched a relative of Heuermann’s who isn’t a suspect, investigators said. They believe he got the other person’s hair on him at home.
It’s not our first time encountering a serial killer living a double life. Some notable examples are John Wayne Gacy, Robert Hansen (not the FBI traitor), and Dennis Rader (BTK Killer). Heuermann appears to have been a successful architectural consultant whose client list included American Airlines, Catholic Charities, and New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection—The New York Times had a lengthy piece about Heuermann’s other life, where he appeared to have a professional reputation that elicited various opinions.
Arrogant and “overly fastidious,” the man’s attention to detail led to his termination from a renovation project in Brooklyn Heights. In contrast, others praised him, describing the man as a “gem” who was “highly knowledgeable” and capable of navigating the city’s building codes to get things done. But the creepiness factor was pervasive in his neighbors' accounts of their interactions with him, all perplexed that a man who left for work in a suit would live in such a dilapidated home:
“We would cross the street,” said Nicholas Ferchaw, 24, a neighbor. “He was somebody you don’t want to approach.”
On Friday, Suffolk County prosecutors said that residents of Massapequa Park had a serial killer living in their midst. They accused Mr. Heuermann, 59, of leaving a quarter-mile trail of young women’s bodies on the South Shore of Long Island in what came to be known as the Gilgo Beach Killings. Yet he was so careful in covering his tracks, they said, that it took them nearly 15 years to arrest him.
Mr. Heuermann’s friends and clients in the real estate business were flabbergasted.
His neighbor Mr. Ferchaw said, “I wasn’t surprised at all — because of all the creepiness.”
[…]
Mike Schmidt, who has lived in the neighborhood for 10 years, has a friend who lives behind Mr. Heuermann. Sometimes Mr. Schmidt would visit his buddy, have a few beers in the backyard, look out at the sagging Heuermann house, “and say ‘He probably has bodies there.’”
Last Halloween, Mr. Schmidt and his friend resolved to take their kids trick-or-treating at Mr. Heuermann’s house, just to get a look inside. They were surprised when Mr. Heuermann himself answered the door and gave each child a small plastic pumpkin overflowing with candy.
When Mr. Schmidt’s wife learned where the candy came from, she made him throw it out.
Officially, Heuermann has been charged with three of the murders. He’s entered a plea of not guilty.
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Last Note: Melissa Barthelemy’s remains were discovered in December 2010, but she wasn’t the subject of the search. Authorities were out looking for Shannan Gilbert, a sex worker, who disappeared but not before leaving a frenetic 911 call that lasted 21 minutes, where she claimed someone was after her, according to CBS News. Police found her personal items in a marsh eight miles from Gilgo Beach in December 2011. She was eventually found a quarter mile away. Commissioner Harrison stressed that while Gilbert’s death was tragic, it was not connected to the Long Island Serial Killer, with the current theory being that Gilbert was probably under the influence of drugs and fled into the marsh, succumbing to the elements.
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